by Jason Snell
Apple continues planning its news subscription service
Gerry Smith of Bloomberg reports about Apple’s plans to re-launch the Texture content-subscription app within Apple News:
The tech giant is preparing to relaunch Texture, an app it agreed to buy in March that offers unlimited access to about 200 magazines. The company plans to make it a premium product within Apple News, which curates articles and comes preinstalled on iPhones, according to people familiar with the matter. A new version could be unveiled as soon as this coming spring, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans aren’t public.
As the article describes, the challenge here is that a lot of publications are making it work with their own premium subscription models. But there’s probably a second tier of publications that could see added revenue if they embraced Apple’s all-you-can-eat subscription approach.
It’s unclear if Apple can drive enough subscriptions to this service to provide enough revenue to make a bunch of other media businesses successful, though. My gut feeling is that it can’t, but it’s possible we’re heading for a hybrid model where dedicated subscribers pay news sources directly, while less loyal news grazers buy a Texture (or Apple News) subscription in order to browse widely without hitting a paywall.
And of course, this whole thing is going to be yet another bit of subscription revenue that adds to Apple’s ever-growing Services revenue line.